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UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

latimes.com

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Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#71

Post by kragen »

Historically the SAT was designed as an anti-Semitic discrimination measure; the racist belief that underlay it was that Jewish people were doing well on college admission criteria because they worked too hard, so designing a test that it was impossible to study for --- a test that measured academic aptitude rather than achievement --- would restore the racist world order in which non-Jewish white people constituted virtually the entire student body. Much to the racists' surprise, Jewish people continued to excel on the SAT, and it turned out to be easy to study for.

Today, alongside Jewish people, US universities want to discriminate against Asian-Americans, who have the same high test scores, high academic achievements including grades, and stereotypes of working too hard; often they carry out this discrimination by requiring higher test scores from Asian-Americans than from white people https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2017/08/07..., but this practice is illegal in California and under attack elsewhere. Consequently Asian-Americans constituted 40% of in-state UC freshmen in 02019, double their share of the population https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-11-01/affirmat... and this explains why UC wants to drop objective admission requirements like SAT scores in order to admit a more balanced (read "white") student body, provoking strong opposition from Asian-American groups: https://asianamericanforeducation.org/en/pr_20200519/

Unsurprisingly standardized testing increases representation of low-income students https://50.cresst.org/2020/05/20/cresst-recommendation-for-n... because, within a context of inequality, the only alternative to meritocracy is inherited privilege.

This is closely related to why US tech companies, who hire you based on whether you can program in an interview, are dramatically more diverse than, for example, US tech journalism companies, who apparently hire you based on whether you're white: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29277661

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#73

Post by seneca »

akomtu wrote: post #9

"faculty could find no alternative exam that would avoid the biased results" They are too weak to say "SAT hasn't produced the results we wanted, so we're going to..." "seek more equitable ways to assess a student" They're again, too weak to say "from now on, admissions will be based on color". "the state exam ... would disproportionately favor Asian Americans" Oh, the horror, tests show that Asians are smart. Can't…

It really is madness. "We tested as many ways as we could think of, but we couldn't game it to get the results we want so we just decided testing doesn't work". These are the people in charge of training our children, and they think this these are valid conclusions.

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#74

Post by alphabettsy »

rsj_hn wrote: post #67
mrjangles wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree and not even remotely jokingly. Higher education outside of STEM has been nonsense for quite some time. Inside of STEM, it has been an outdated form of education for just as long. The encroachment of socialism into the educational sphere needs to accelerate . The sooner it destroys itself the better.

That's great if your only requirement is to train software developers to write CRUD apps - you can learn to do that by watching youtube videos, reading self-study materials, and taking MOOC classes - but if you want mechanical engineers, chemical engineers, electrical engineers, and be a leader in materials science or chip manufacturing, then you still need universities. So the price of this "equity" movement is goin…

I don’t believe objective measures of intelligence tell you all that much about someone.

There are plenty of extremely intelligent people who for various reasons accomplish nothing and plenty of dropouts bringing enormous value to the world.

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#76

Post by rackjack »

In China there is 1 exam, the Gaokao. This exam in no small part decides your future. In the past, you had one attempt, and if you failed, tough luck. Now they let kids retake it a couple times.

One exam. One billion people. One standardized metric to determine who goes where.

There are flaws to this of course. The rich, with better access to tutoring and such, naturally have an advantage over the poor. But herein lies the benefit of such a system -- it is an explicit advantage. Everybody knows it. Everybody can see it. The path to obtain it is as clear as day -- "simply" have enough money. Similarly, the path to obtain success is clear -- succeed on the Gaokao (besides cheating, which is a whole other thing, and corruption, which is yet another thing).

People naturally stratify themselves in competition. When you eliminate standardized metrics to distinguish people, they will find other ways. Your friend has an internship opening that your kid can fill. Your boss lets your kid work under him. You know people who can help your kid get ahead. Meanwhile, the underprivileged are still pushed down, but in a much more subtle way. It is not scores that divides them and the privileged. It is connections -- and when you are a kid, these connections come from your family. And if you are poor, you do not have these connections. And unlike the singular exam, the path to obtaining these connections is not so clear.

Removing entry exam requirements does not help underprivileged students. It hurts them, but because it is a subtle hurt that ties to their family's place in society instead of a loud hurt like the cost of tutoring, people pretend it is somehow better. It is not. It is worse.

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#77

Post by stadium »

rsj_hn wrote: post #52
stadium wrote: post #42

Does this mean we are past peak-leetcode too?

No, firms will need to do much more leetcode as the signaling value of a degree decreases.

Good luck to those firms that have the fastest b-tree optimizations physically possible, and no customers.

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#78

Post by jchonphoenix »

Sounds like a UC degree is getting less and less valuable from a signaling perspective. They ignored the research results of their own team and professors which conclusively showed standardized testing was the highest signal for academic success across all races. Talk about political bureaucracy

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#79

Post by stadium »

WalterBright wrote: post #55
stadium wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a native English speaker I read "such as" to mean "including but not limited to." STEM is a field (although still broad) and they are looking for accomplishment in a field.

STEM is a very broad field, and core, not an incidental.

Lot of room for accomplishment in a broad field!

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#80

Post by TeeMassive »

rackjack wrote: post #76

In China there is 1 exam, the Gaokao. This exam in no small part decides your future. In the past, you had one attempt, and if you failed, tough luck. Now they let kids retake it a couple times. One exam. One billion people. One standardized metric to determine who goes where. There are flaws to this of course. The rich, with better access to tutoring and such, naturally have an advantage over the poor. But herein li…

It has been my impression from people who lived in China that guanxi (connections) is far more important than the Gaokao and the main difference between the have and the have-nots is whether you and or your parents have a permit to live in a city.

When I bring the point of the standard exam as a great equalizer they immediately laughed and told me that the US is a egalitarian paradise compared to what goes on there.

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